Ayn Rand: The Virtue of Selfishness

Jatketaan vielä Ayn Randin tuotannolla. Tällä kertaa on vuorossa The Virtue of Selfishness, joka on ehkä selkein paketti Randin filosofiasta ja ajattelusta. Siinä missä Randin Atlas Shrugged on fiktiivinen ja pitkä tarinamuotoinen mestariteos, The Virtue of Selfisness koostuu lyhyistä ja suoraan aihealueeseen iskevistä tekstipätkistä. Tyyliltään se on samanlainen kuin Capitalism - The Unknown Ideal, joka paneutuu puolustamaan kapitalmismia yhteiskunta- ja talousjärjestelmänä, tässä teoksessa sen sijaan keskitytään puolustamaan yksilöä kaiken toiminnan keskiössä.

Ayn Rand: The Virtue of Selfishness

Varoitus: herättää varmasti vastustusta!

 

The Virtue of Selfishness on Radin teoksista kaikkein eniten vastustusta herättävä. Se on niin tiukka yksilökeskeisyyden ylistyspuheenvuoro, että kaikki "itsekkyys on pahasta" ajattelijat saavat siitä bensaa liekkeihinsä. Se tarjoaa ravisuttelevan vastakohdan yleisesti vallitsevalle ajattelulle ja siksi se nostaa taatusti karvat pystyyn. Itsellenikin se oli lukukokemuksena melko mykistävä. Kuitenkin Randia ei pitäisi tuomita ilman tarkempaa tarkastelua, sillä Rand on ajattelussaan looginen, järjestelmällinen ja perusteellinen. On syytä tarkistaa omat lähtöolettamat (check your premises), jos aikoo Randin näkemykset vääriksi osoittaa. Ihan helpolla se ei onnistu. Ehkä lopulta joutuu vain toteamaan, että maailmankuvat ovat erilaiset.

 

Arvot, ajattelu ja tuottava työ

 

Randin teos kulminoituu yksilön arvovalintojen arvostamiselle. Tämä on kaiken toiminnan lähtökohta. Yksilöllä on tavoitteita ja tahtotiloja, jotka hän haluaa saavuttaa. Toiseksi Rand kunnioittaa suuresti kykyä ajatella. Tämä kyky erottaa ihmiset ympäristöönsä reagoivista eläimistä ja mahdollistaa kehityksen. Kolmanneksi Rand nostaa arvoon tuottavan työn. Siinä ajatukset siirretään käytäntöön ja luodaan omin käsin hyvinvointia. Arvot, ajattelu ja tuottava työntekeminen, aika hyvät peruskivet elämänfilosofiaan.

 

Rand tuomitsee rasismin

 

Rand varaa kirjassaan kokonaisen kappaleen rasismille. Hän tuomitsee rasismin ja rasistisen ajattelun kiitettävällä tavalla. En tiedä mihin viitekehykseen kokoomusnuorten puheenjohtaja Susanna Koski yksilökeskeisen ajattelunsa perustaa,  mutta ehkä hänen olisi kannattanut lukea Randia hieman tarkemmin ja ymmärtää yksilökeskeisyyden lähtökohta hieman syvällisemmin ennen kuin lähti julkiseen keskusteluun aihealueesta. Hänen argumenttinsa kun eivät pysyneet kasassa, yksilön oikeudet ja rasisimi sekoittuivat, ja koko keskustelu kääntyi itseään vastaan. Randin mukaan rasismi on kollektiivisen mielen ilmentymä. Pienin yksikkö maailmassa on yksilö, joten jokainen yksilöä arvostava arvostaa myös kaikkia vähemmistöjä.

 

Klassikko

 

The Virtue of Selfishness on kirjana sen verran radikaali, että aivan vasta-alkajan käsissä siitä voi helposti vetää vääriä tulkintoja. Toisaalta se on suoraviivaisin tapa tutustua Randiin, mutta syvällisemmin se aukeaa, jos on ensin lukenut muita tuotoksia. Lukemisen arvoinen ilman muuta ja jokainen sivu tarjoaa takuuvarmaa sitaattimateriaalia. Klassikko, joka kannattaisi suomentaa.

Poiminnot

• The exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests.
• The first step is to assert man’s right to a moral existence – that is: to recognize his need of a moral code to guide the course and the fulfillment of his own life.
• “Value” is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. The concept “value” is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? It presupposes an entity capable of achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible. (16)
• … It is only the concept of Life that makes the concept of Value possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil. Only a living entity can have goals or can originate them. (16)
• An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means – and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated. An organism’s life is its standard of value; that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil. (17)
• Consciousness is the basic means of survival. (19)
• Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses. It is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. …Thinking requires a state of full focused awareness. (22)
• Psychologically, the choice “to think or not” is the choice “to focus or not”. Existentially, the choice “to focus or not” is the choice “to be conscious or not”. Metaphysically the choice “to be conscious or not” it the choice of life or death. (22)
• Ethics is not a mystic fantasy – nor a social convention – nor a dispensable, subjective luxury, to be switched or discarded in any emergency. Ethics is an objective, metaphysical necessity of man’s survival – not by the grace of the supernatural nor or your neighbors nor of your whims, but by the grace of reality and the nature of life. (24)
• Since everything man needs has to be discovered by his own mind and produced by his own effort, the two essentials of the method of survival proper to a rational being are: thinking and productive work. (25)
• The Objectivist ethics holds man’s life as the standard of value – and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man. (27)
• Value is that which one acts to gain/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one gains and/or keeps it. The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics – the three values, which, together, are the means to and the realization of one’s ultimate value, one’s own life – are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride. Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man’s life, the central value that integrates and determinates the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work – pride is the result. (27)
• Productive work is the road of man’s unlimited achievement and calls upon the highest attributes of his character: his creative ability, his ambitiousness, his self-assertiveness, his refusal to bear uncontested disasters, his dedication to the goal of reshaping the earth in the image of his values. (29)
• The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others – and, therefore, that man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is man’s highest moral purpose. (30)
• Happiness is the successful state of life. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. (30)
• Happiness can properly be the purpose of ethics, but not the standard. The task of ethics is to define man’s proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness. (33)
• The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relationships, personal and social, private and public, spiritual and material. It is the principle of justice. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. (34)
• To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love – because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone. (35)
• It is only on the basis of rational selfishness – on the basis of justice – that men can be fit to live together in a free, peaceful, prosperous, benevolent, rational society. (35)
• The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence – to protect him from physical violence – to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. (36)
• When I say “capitalism”, I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism – with a separation of state and economics, in the same way for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. A pure system of capitalism has never yet existed, not even in America: various degrees of government control had been undercutting and distorting it from the start. Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future – if mankind is to have future. (37)
• The proper function of consciousness is: perception, cognition, and the control of action. (40)
• Faith is the commitment of one’s consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof…. Faith is the equation of feeling with knowledge. (41)
• Pride is one’s response to one’s power to achieve values, the pleasure one takes in one’s own efficacy. … Pride has to be earned. (45)
• The root of selfishness is man’s right – and need – to act on his own judgment. (46)
• Always act in accordance with the hierarchy of your values, and never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one. (50)
• Love and friendship are profoundly personal, selfish values: love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one’s own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love. (51)
• Any action that man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to him. (51)
• It is only in emergency situations that one should volunteer to help strangers, if it is in one’s power. …One should help men in an emergency. (55)
• One’s sole obligation toward others, in this respect, is to maintain a social system that leaves men free to achieve, to gain and to keep their values. (55)
• There are no conflict of interests among rational men. And there are four reasons to that: Reality, Context, Responsibility and Effort. (57)
• Like any other value, love is not a static quantity to be divided, but an unlimited response to be earned. (63)
• There are, broadly, five (interconnected) areas that allow man to experience the enjoyment of life: productive work, human relationships, recreation, art, sex. – Nathaniel Branden.(72)
• Of the various pleasures that man can offer himself, the greatest is pride – the pleasure he takes in his own achievements and in the creation of his own character. The pleasure he takes in the character and achievements of another human being is that of admiration. The highest expression of the most intense union of these two responses – pride and admiration – is romantic love. Its celebration is sex. – Nathaniel Branden. (76)
• A man falls in love with and sexually desires the person who reflects his own deepest values. – Nathaniel Branden. (77)
• There can be no compromise on moral principles. (81)
• One must never fail to pronounce moral judgment. Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man’s character as thoroughly as does the precept of moral agnosticism, the idea that one must never pass moral judgment on others, that one must be morally tolerant of anything, that the good consists of never distinguishing good from evil. (82)
• There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices; so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims. (83)
• Judge, and be prepared to be judged. (83)
• “Surely you don’t think in terms of black-and-white, do you?” – The proper answer (in essence, if not in form) should be: “You’re damn right I do!” (92)
• What will happen to the poor in an Objectivist society? If you want to help them, you will not be stopped. Only individual men have the right to decide then or whether they wish to help others; society – as an organized political system – has no rights in the matter at all. (93)
• The man who is willing to serve as the means to ends of others, will necessarily regard others as the means to his ends. (94)
• Progress can come only out of men’s surplus, that is: from the work of those men whose ability produces more than their personal consumption requires, those who are intellectually and financially able to venture out in pursuit of the new. Capitalism is the only system where such men are free to function and where progress is accompanied, not by forced privations, but by a constant rise in the general level of prosperity, of consumption and of enjoyment of life. (97)
• All public projects are mausoleums, not always in shape, but always in cost. (98)
• America’s greatness lies in the fact that her actual monuments are not public. The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach. But America’s skyscrapers were not built by public funds nor for a public purpose; they were built by the energy, iniative and wealth of private individuals for personal profit. (105)
• There is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights”. No human rights can exist without property rights. Since material goods are produced by the mind and effort of individual men, and are needed to sustain their lives, if the producer does not own the result of his effort, he does not own his life. To deny property rights means to turn men into property owned by the state. Whoever claims the “right” to “redistribute” the wealth produced by others is claiming the “right” to treat human beings as chattel. (106)
• If one wishes to advocate a free society – that is, capitalism – one must realize that its indispensable foundation is the principle of individual rights. (108)
• The right to property is a right to action, like all others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values. (111)
• There are two potential violators of man’s rights: the criminals and the government. (111)
• The Founding Fathers spoke of the right to the pursuit of happiness – not of the right to happiness. It means that a man has a right to take actions he deems necessary to achieve his happiness; it does not mean that others must make him happy. (114)
• Rights are moral principles which define and protect a man’s freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men. (115)
• Those who advocate laissez-faire capitalism are the only advocates of man’s rights. (117)
• The government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose. (129)
• The proper functions of a government fall into three broad categories: all of them involving the issues of physical force and the protection of men’s rights: the police, to protect men from criminals – the armed services, to protect men from foreign invaders – the law courts, to settle disputes among men according to objective laws. (131)
• In a fully free society, taxation – or, to be exact, payment for governmental services would be voluntary. The citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for insurance. (135)
• For every species, growth is a necessity of survival. Biologically, inactivity is death. (141)
• Capitalism, by its nature, entails a constant process of motion, growth and progress. It creates the optimum social conditions for man to respond to the challenges of nature in such a way as best to further his life. It operates to the benefit of all those who choose to be active in the productive process, whatever their level of ability. But it is not geared to the demands of stagnation. Neither is reality. (146)
• Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage – the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. (147)
• Just as there is no such thing as a collective or racial mind, so there is no such thing as a collective or racial achievement. There are only individual minds and individual achievements – and a culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiated masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men. (148)
• Racism has only one psychological root: the racist’s sense of his own interiority. Like every other form of collectivism, racism is a quest from the unearned. It is a quest for automatic knowledge – for an automatic evaluation of men’s characters that bypasses the responsibility of exercising rational or moral judgment – and, above all, a quest for an automatic self-esteem (or pseudo-self-esteem). The overwhelming majority of racists are men who have earned no sense of personal identity, who can claim no individual achievement or distinction, and who seek the illusion of a “tribal self-esteem”. (149)
• There is only one antidote to racism: the philosophy of individualism and its politico-economic corollary, laissez-faire capitalism. …It is not a man’s ancestors or relatives or genes or body chemistry that count in a free market, but only one human attribute: productive ability. It is by his own individual ability and ambition that capitalism judges a man and rewards him accordingly. No political system can establish universal rationality by law (or by force). But capitalism is the only system that functions in a way which rewards rationality and penalizes all forms of irrationality, including racism. …It is capitalism that gave mankind its first steps toward freedom and a rational way of life. It is capitalism that broke through national and racial barriers, by means of free trade. It is capitalism that abolished serfdom and slavery in all the civilized countries of the world. (151)
• The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. (154)

Arvopaperi: Mahdoton tehtävä, Herra Ministeri?

Vierailin jälleen viime viikolla Arvopaperin kumppaniblogissa. Tällä kertaa pohdin valtion omistajaohjausta ja sen ongelmallisuutta. Ohessa teksti. Alkuperäinen on täällä.

Mahdoton tehtävä, Herra Ministeri?

Kiinnostaisiko vastuupaikka 25 miljardin yritysomaisuuden salkunhoitajana? Eipä tuntunut kiinnostavan, kun maahan haettiin uutta omistajaministeriä. Eikä ihmekään. Omistajaministerin paikka on poliittinen pommi. Tekee ministeri mitä tahansa, tai jättää tekemättä, aina saa kriisin aikaiseksi. Jos ei itse kriisiä aiheuta, niin salkkuyhtiöt sen aikaansaavat joka tapauksessa. Joko käydään asuntokauppaa sisäpiirissä tai sitten vuotaa taas kipsisakka-allas. Ja ministeri ei näille asioille voi mitään. Ei vaikka olisi kuinka kontrollifriikki. Vastuun hän kuitenkin kantaa ja saa vastata asiasta julkisesti syyttävien mikrofonien edessä. Ex-ministeri Pekka Vennamo kiteytti kokemuksellaan: "Omistajaohjauksesta vastaavan ministerin tehtävä on mahdoton".

Omistajaohjausministerin tehtävänä on johtamisen johtamisen johtaminen. Hän pyrkii välimiesten ja -naisten (virkamiehet ja yhtiön hallitus) kautta vaikuttamaan siihen, miten valtionyhtiöitä johdetaan (yhtiön toimitusjohtaja). Ei mikään ihanteellinen komentoketju. Kun vielä huomioi, että toimitusjohtajat ovat yleisesti varsin herkkiä oman tonttinsa suhteen, ja välimiehillä on valitettavan usein omat intressinsä, kuten positioiden jakaminen pienessä piirissä tai oman curlingseuran tukeminen, on ministerin käsky- ja ohjausvalta köydellä työntämistä.

Valtionyhtiöiden johdolle ja väliportaalle ihanteellinen omistajaohjausministeri on ”meidän mies” tai harmiton hölmö. Eniten harmia saa aikaan yhdistelmä tyhmä ja ahkera. Kymmenen uutisten kommentaattori letkautti loistavasti todetessaan, että ”vuorineuvoksilla voi mennä viskit väärään kurkkuun, jos yhtiökokouksissa äänivaltaa alkaakin käyttää todellinen ympäristöaktivisti”.

Eniten tässä episodissa minua huolestuttaa valtion omaisuudenhoito. Onko tosiaan niin, että omistajaministeri ei ole arvostettu paikka? Jos ylin vallankäyttäjä ei tunne aihealuetta omakseen, kuka omaisuutta oikeasti johtaa? Poliitikot, virkamiehet vai yritysjohtajat? Ilman asiaansa osaavaa, innostunutta ja näkemyksellistä ministeriä vallitsee virkamiesvalta. Ilman yhtiöitä tuntevia ja omistajatahtoa ohjaavia virkamiehiä johto kaappaa vallan. Kun paras kohdetieto on joka tapauksessa yhtiön johdolla ja ministerit vaihtuvat muutamien vuosien välein, voiko ministeri mitenkään olla tämän valtaketjun vahvin lenkki?

Entä miten omaisuutta sitten ohjataan? Corporate governancelta ja kivoilta omistajapolitiikkateksteiltä putoaa pohja, kun käy ilmi että käytännössä omistajatahto ilmaistaan virkamiehen tekstarilla. Jos viesti ei mene muuten perille niin uhataan potkuilla. Mietin vain, miltä on tuntunut olla kyseisen yhtiön hallituksessa. Kumileimasin sentään on päättävässä pöydässä, nyt omistajan edustaja hoiti hommat itse ohi hallituksen.

Ehkä nyt olisi aika nostaa keskusteluun koko valtion omistajaohjauksen ongelmallisuus. Voi vain kysyä, mikä on valtion lisäarvo omistajana nykyisissä omistusyrityksissä. Taitaa olla negatiivinen. Peruskysymys kuuluu, voiko valtio mitenkään luoda lisäarvoa omistajana markkinoilla toimivissa yrityksissä? Tuskinpa. Tässä tilanteessa olisi voitu tehdä reipas ratkaisu: luopua omistajaohjausministeristä kokonaan, siirtää salkku Solidiumille ja antaa tehtäväksi yksityistää. Näin kenties maksimoitaisiin veronmaksajien kansallisomaisuuden omistaja-arvo ja piristettäisiin pääomamarkkinoitamme.

Kuitenkin kun katsoo komentoketjua, ymmärtää miksi näin ei tehdä. Yhdenkään ketjun lenkin intresseissä ja insentiiveissä ei ole yksityistäminen. Ministeri ottaa myynnissä poliittisen riskin, koska hinta on aina jonkun mielestä halpa. Väliportaalle myynti tarkoittaa omien valtapaikkojen vähenemistä ja salkun pienentymistä. Yhtiöiden johdolle muutos markkinavetoisuuteen tuo todennäköisesti lisää paineita. Status quo siis säilyy. Vai säilyykö, Herra Ministeri?

Tero Luoma, sijoitusjohtaja, Taaleritehtaan Pääomarahastot Oy

I am John Galt

Sainpas hyvällä tekosyyllä blogiini hienon otsikon. Nimittäin lukemalla Donald L. Luskin ja Andrew Gretan teoksen I am John Galt - Today's Heroic Innovators Building the World and the Villainous Parasites Destroying It.

 

Luskin & Greta: I am John Galt

Valitettavasti kirja ei vain ollut lukemisen arvoinen. Se oli oikeastaan surkea. Sen yksinkertainen perusajatus oli tuoda Ayn Randin mestariteoksen Atlas Shruggedin ihmiset nykyaikaan hakemalla hahmoille vastineita reaalielämästä. Ayn Randin hahmot Atlas Shruggedissa ovat erinomaisen todentuntuisia ja niille löytyy vastineita arkipäivän elämästä useita, mutta kirjan kirjoittamiseen tämä vertailuajattelu ei vain kanna. Vielä ontuvamman vertailusta tekee se, että itse hahmojen luojalla eli edesmenneellä Ayn Randilla ei tietenkään ole ollut osaa eikä arpaa näiden vastinparien valinnassa.

 

Kolmen henkilön osalta kirjoittajiin on helppo yhtyä: Paul Krugman Ellsworth Tooheyna eli sosialistina, Bill Gates Henry Reardenina eli toimialaansa muuttavana teknologisena innovaattorina sekä Milton Friedman Hugh Akstonina eli akateemisena vapauden ja markkinatalouden puolustajana. Alan Greenspan esitellään kirjassa Robert Stadlerina eli liberalistina, josta tuli talouden tsaari. Hänet esitellään myös takinkääntäjänä, osin petturinakin, eli todetaan hänen olleen Ayn Randin lähipiiriläisiä ja ystäviä, mutta valtaan päästyään hänen talouspolitiikkansa tulkittiin osin ihanteiden vastaiseksi. Tämä tulkinta ei liene tällaisena ulkopuolisena arviona reilu Greenspania kohtaan.

 

Atlas Shrugged Suomessa?

 

Jo Atlas Shrugeddia lukiessani mietin, kuka olisi kukin Suomen yhteiskunnassa. Nimittely ei ole reilua, voisi olla jopa henkilön kunniaa loukkaavaa, joten jätän sen julkisesti tekemättä. Wesley Moucheja eli poliitikkoja, jotka kuvittelevat ymmärtävänsä taloutta sitä oikeasti ymmärtämättä ja siten sekoittavat yhteiskunnan toimintaa, löytyy lukuisia. Aivan liikaa. Ja aivan liian keskeisistä asemista. Samoin James Taggarteja löytyy eli suurten yritysten johtajia, joiden pääasiallinen tehtävä tuntuu olevan oman aseman turvaaminen ja yrityksen toiminnan suojaaminen kilpailulta lobbaamalla lainsäädäntöä. Henry Reardeneita eli periksiantamattomia yrittäjiä ja innovaattoreitakin onneksi löytyy useista suomalaisista pk-yrityksistä. Siinä on aika paljon pohjanmaalaista henkeä Henry Reardenin toiminnassa.

 

Mutta missä on Suomen Hugh Akston, akateeminen liberalismin ja vapaan markkinatalouden puolustaja? Yksi vahva kandidaatti, nyt jo eläköitynyt, taitaa löytyä Tampereelta.

 

Entä Francisco d'Anconia, renesanssi henkilö ja todellinen kapitalismin provosoiva puolustaja? Tämä kunniallinen titteli on helppo jakaa eräälle viiksimiehelle, joka ei keskustelunavauksillaan ole taatusti jättänyt ketään kylmäksi. Lienee kapitalismin ykköspuolustaja suomalaisessa yhteiskunnassa.

 

Löytyisikö Ragnar Danneskjöldiä, henkilöä joka haluaa lopettaa Robin Hoodin ihanteen maailmasta eli rikkailta ryöstämisen? Vielä ei ole kävelly Suomessa tällaista vastaan.

 

Mites Dagny Taggart, Atlas Shruggedin päähenkilö, nainen joka ei jäänyt jalkoihin miehisessä korporaatiomaailmassa vaan veti rohkeasti omaa polkuaan ja otti aina vastuuta muiden sitä väistellessä? Näitäkin onneksi löytyy, ennen kaikkea liike-elämästä. Yksi vahva nimi on myös järjestöjohtajana.

 

Myös Midas Mulligan on kiinnostava persoona. Pankkiiri, joka liittyi ensimmäisenä lakkolaisiin ja toimi keskeisenä taustavaikuttajana ja rahoittajana koko operaatiossa.

 

Mutta silti, kaiken tämän jälkeenkin, kysymys kuuluu, kuka on John Galt?

Ayn Rand: For The New Intellectual

Jatketaan Ayn Randin parissa. For The New Intellectual on eräänlainen Ayn Randin aiempien teosten koontiteos. Siinä esitellään lyhyesti Randin pääteokset We The Living, Anthem, The Fountainhead ja Atlas Shrugged. Atlas Shruggedista esitellään mm. John Galtin loppupuhe kokonaan.
 

Ayn Rand: For the New Intellectual

For The New Intellectual on ylistyspuheenvuoro ajattelijoille. Rand nostaa valokeilaan kaksi ihmistyyppiä, joita hän selvästi arvostaa ylitse muiden eli ammattilaiset liikemiehet/naiset ja ammattilaiset ajattelijat eli tieteentekijät, kirjailijat ja uutta luovat. Rand peräänkuuluttaa näiden kahden ihmisryhmän yhteistyötä, koska uudet ajatukset (tiede) ja niiden soveltaminen käytäntöön (liiketoiminta) ovat yhteiskuntaa eteenpäin vievä voima.

 

For The New Intellectual ei itsessään ole merkittävä teos. Ensikertalaiselle se toimii hyvänä johdantona Randin tuotantoon. Sen perusteella voi päättää, haluaako lähteä lukemaan syvällisemmin muita teoksia. Randia jo lukeneelle se on tiivistelmä aiemmista ajatuksista lisättynä lyhyellä johdannolla. Muutamia sitaatin arvoisia lainauksia sentään tästäkin kirjasta sain talteen.

Poiminnot

• When a man, a business corporation or an entire society is approaching bankruptcy, there are two courses that those involved can follow: they can evade the reality of their situation and act on a frantic, blind, range-of-the-moment expediency – not daring to look ahead, wishing no one would name the truth, yet desperately hoping that something will save them somehow – or they can indentify the situation, check their premises, discover their hidden assets and start rebuilding.
• The professional businessman and the professional intellectual came into existence together, as brothers born of the industrial revolution. Both are the sons of capitalism – and if they perish, they will perish together.
• Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.
• Capitalism wiped out slavery in matter and in spirit. It replaced Attila and the Witch Doctor, the looter of wealth and the purveyor of revelations, with two new types of man; the producer of wealth and the purveyor of knowledge – the businessman and the intellectual.
• Capitalism demands the best of every man – his rationality – and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him. His success depends on the objective value of his work and on the rationality of those who recognize that value. When men are free to trade, with reason and reality as their only arbiter, when no man may use physical force to extort the consent of another, it is the best product and the best judgment that win in every field of human endeavor, and raise the standard of living – and of thought – ever higher for all those who take part in mankind’s productive activity.
• The professional businessman is the field agent of the army whose lieutenant-commander-in-chief is the scientist. The businessman carries scientific discoveries from the laboratory of the inventor to industrial plants, and transform them into material products that will men’s physical needs and expand the comfort of men’s existence. By creating mass market, he makes these products available to every income level of society. By using machines, he increases the productivity of human labor, thus raising labor’s economic rewards. By organizing human effort into productive enterprises, he creates employment for men of countless professions. He is the great liberator who, in the short span of a century and a half, has released them from the terrible drudgery of an eighteen-hour workday of manual labor for their barest subsistence, has released them from famines, from pestilences, from the stagnant hopeless and terror in which most of mankind has lived in all the pre-capitalist centuries – and in which most of it still lives, in non-capitalist countries.
• There ought to be a private, voluntary program of “student exchanges” between the intellectuals and the businessmen, the two groups that need each other most, yet know less and understand less about each other than any alien society in any distant corner of the globe. The businessmen need to discover the intellect, the intellectuals need to discover reality.
• Honor is a thing to be earned.
• Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution – or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-handler who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement. (The Fountainhead)
• Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But creator is the man who stands alone. (The Fountainhead)
• The only good which men can do to one another and the only statement of their proper relationship is – Hands off! (The Fountainhead)

Ayn Rand: Capitalism

Viime aikoina olen lukenut laajasti Ayn Randin tuotantoa. Aloitin The Art of Non-Fictionilla, jatkoin mestariteos Atlas Shruggedilla ja nyt kävin läpi Capitalismin. Seuraavaksi vuorossa on For The New Intellectual, The Virtue of Selfisness sekä Philosophy - Who Needs it? sekä kun löytyy sopiva hetki, toinen mestariteos The Fountainhead.

Ayn Rand: Capitalism - The Unknown Ideal

Capitalism - The Unknown Ideal on Ayn Randin ylistyspuheenvuoro kapitalismista. Siinä otetaan käsijarru pois päältä ja paahdetaan täysillä ja kritiikittä kapitalismin ilosanomaa. Teksti menee kiihkoilun puolelle, niin innostuneesti Rand suitsuttaa kapitalismin ylivertaisuutta. On huomioitava, että Neuvostoliitossa syntyneelle ja sieltä pakoon lähteneelle Randille kapitalismi ja USA merkitsivät henkikökohtaista vapautta ja totaalista yhteiskuntajärjestelmän muutosta. Nämä traagiset elämänkäänteet vaikuttavat väkisinkin Randin suhtautumiseen ja kirjoituksiin. Harva kapitalistisessa yhteiskunnassa koko ikänsä asunut syttyisi vastaavaan kipinään.

 

Kirja koostuu lyhyistä kolumnityyppisistä kirjoituksista ja mukana on myös kaksi ulkopuolista kirjoittajaa, Nathaniel Branden ja Alan Greenspan. Jostain syystä Rand irtisanoutui myöhemmin Brandenin teksteistä todeten, että ne eivät edusta randilaista objektiivisuutta. Greenspan sen sijaan on kirjoittajana äärimmäisen mielenkiintoinen, onhan kyseessä USA:n liittovaltion keskuspankin Fedin entinen pääjohtaja. Greenspan ja Rand olivat sydänystäviä pitkän aikaa ja Greenspan osallistui Randin vetämiin keskustelukerhoihin. Kirjoituksissaan Greenspan ottaa kiitettävän kapitalistisen linjan, jota hän ei kuitenkaan aina Fedin johdossa noudattanut.

 

Capitalism - The Unknown Ideal on kaltaiselleni kapitalistille kiihottavaa luettavaa. Se toteaa asioita tykittämällä eli varsin napakasti ilmaisee asian olevan jollain tavalla, piste. Perusteluja näkemyksille tarjotaan randilaisesta objektiivisuuden filosofiasta johtaen. Ihan aina asiat eivät välttämättä ole niin mustavalkoisia kuin tässä esitetään, mutta suoraviivaisuudessaan ja selkeydessään Rand on kyllä ylivertainen. Kapitalismin ylivertaisuutta epäilevien keskuudessa tämä kirja aikaansaa ärsytystä. Kommunisti ei tätä kirjaa kestäisi lukea. Jos Randin Atlas Shruggedia voi verrata yhdeksi kapitalismin raamatuista, niin tämä lienee sitten kapitalismin katekismus.

 

Kapitalismia käsittelevä kirjallisuus on subjektiivisen näkemykseni mukaan liiaksi kallellaan kritiikkiin, eikä positiiviseen analyysiin. Tältä osin Randin teos on arvokas osa kapitalismin puolustamisessa. Tämä on teos, joka pitäisi suomentaa, koska kirjalla on paljon annettavaa myös suomalaiseen yhteiskunnalliseen keskusteluun. Toisin kuin romaanimuotoinen Atlas Shrugged, tämä kirja sisältää pelkkää asiaa tiivistetyssä muodossa, joten ehkä tämä on hyvä ensiaskel Randin tuotantoon siitä kiinnostuneille. Ainakin minä suosittelen tätä teosta lämpimästi!

Poiminnot

• Objectivism is a philosophical movement; since politics is a branch of philosophy, Objectivism advocates certain political principles - specially, those of laissez-faire capitalism - as the consequence and the ultimate practical application of its fundamental philosophical principles. It does not regard politics as a separate or primary goal, that is: as a goal that can be achieved without a wider ideological context. Politics is based on three other philosophical disciplines: metaphysics, epistemology and ethics - on a theory of man's nature and of man's relationship to existence. It is only on such a base that one can formulate consistent political theory and achieve it in practice... Objectivists are not conservatives. We are radicals for capitalism; we are fighting for that philosophical base which capitalism did not have and without which it was doomed to perish.
• No politico-economic system in history has ever proved its value so eloquently or has benefited mankind so greatly as capitalism - and none has ever been attacked so savagely, viciously, and blindly.
• It must be remembered that the institution of private property, in the full, legal meaning of the term, was brought into existence only by capitalism.
• All wealth is produced by somebody and belongs to somebody.
• Mankind is not an entity, an organism, or a coral bush. The entity involved in production and trade is man. It is with the study of man - not of the loose aggregate known as a "community" - that any science of the humanities has to begin. (5)
• The right to life is the source of all rights, including the right to property. ...Without property rights, no other rights can be practiced. (9)
• Is man free? In mankind's history, capitalism is the only system that answers: yes. Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. (10)
• In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgements, convictions, and interest dictate. They can deal with one another only in terms of and by means of reason. (11)
• Corresponding to the four branches of philosophy, the four keystones of capitalism are: metaphysically, the requirement of man's nature and survival - epistemologically, reason - ethically, individual rights - politically, freedom. (11)
• The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice. (12)
• The objective theory holds that the good is neither an attribute of "things in themselves" nor of man's emotional states, but an evaluation of the facts of reality by man's consciousness according to a rational standard of value. ...The good is an aspect of reality in relation to man. ...Of all the social systems in mankind's history, capitalism is the only system based on an objective theory of values. (14)
• Capitalism gave mankind the longest period of peace in history (1815-1914). (34)
• The degree of a country's freedom is the degree of its prosperity. (38)
• The proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect men from criminals; the military forces, to protect men from foreign invaders; and the law courts, to protect men's property and contracts from breach by force and fraud, and to settle disputes among men according to objectively defined laws. (43)
• A man can grow rich only if he is able to offer better values - better products or services, at a lower price - than others are able to offer. Wealth, in a free market, is achieved by a free, general, "democratic" vote - by the sales and the purchases of every individual who takes part in the economic life of the country. (44)
• Let me define the difference between economic power and political power: economic power is exercised by means of positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of negative, by threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values, the bureacurat's tool is fear. (45)
• There is no way to legislate competition: there are no standards by which one could define who should compete with whom, how many competitors should exist in any given field, what should be their relative strenght or their so-called "relevant markets", what prices they should charge, what methods of compensation are "fair" or "unfair". None of these can be answered, because these precisely are the questions that can be answered only by the mechanism of a free market. (53)
• Businessmen are the symbol of a free society - the symbol of America. If and when they perish, civilization will perish. (62)
• The ultimate regulator of competition in a free economy is the capital market. So long as capital is free to flow, it will tend to seek those areas which offer the maximum rate of return. ...Therefore, the existence of a free capital market does not quarantee that a monopolist who enjoys high profits will necessary and immediately find himself confronted by competition. What it does guarantee is that a monopolist whose high profits are caused by high prices, rather than low costs, will soon meet competition organized by the capital market. - Alan Greenspan. (69)
• The belief that unions can cause a general rise in the standard of living is a myth. - Nathaniel Branden. (89)
• Economic progress, like every other form of progress, has only one ultimate source: man's mind - and can exist only to the extent that man is free to translate his thought into action. -Nathaniel Branden. (91)
• Education should be liberated from the control or intervention of government, and turned over to profit-making private enterprise, not because education is unimportant, but because education is so crucially important. - Nathaniel Branden. (95)
• In a free economy, inherited wealth is not an impediment or a threat to those who do not possess it. Wealth, is not a static, limited quantity that can only be divided or looted; wealth is produced; its potential quantity is virtually limited. ...The greater the amount of wealth, of industrial development, in existence, the higher the economic rewards (in wages and profits) and the wider the market for ability - for new ideas, products and services. - Nathaniel Branden. (97)
• Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. - Alan Greenspan. (106)
• The law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. ...In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. ...The financial policy of welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the "hidden" confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. - Alan Greenspan. (107)
• Government control of the economy, no matter in whose behalf, has been the source of all the evils in our industrial history - and the solution is lassez-faire capitalism, i.e., the abolition of any and all forms of government intervention in production and trade, the separation of State and Economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of Church and State. (116)
• Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtues, not of vices. (130)
• Contrary to the ”argument of scarcity”, if you want to make a limited resource available to the whole people, make it private property and throw it on a free open market. (134)
• Since “public property” is a collective fiction, since the public as a whole can neither use nor dispose of its “property”, that “property” will always be taken over by some political “elite”, by a small clique which will then rule the public – a public of literal, dispossessed proletarians. (139)
• The airways should be turned over to private ownership. The only way to do it now is to sell radio and television frequencies to the highest bidders (by an objectively defined, open, impartial process) – and thus put an end to the gruesome fiction of “public property”. (139)
• Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man’s right to the product of his mind. (141)
• Altruism is not a doctrine of love, but of hatred for man. (148)
• Collectivism does not preach sacrifice as a temporary means to some desirable end. Sacrifice is its end – sacrifice as a way of life. It is man’s independence, success, prosperity, and happiness that collectivists wish to destroy. (148)
• Colbert, chief adviser of Louis XIV asked a group of manufacturers what he could do for industry. A manufacturer named Legendre answered: “Laissez-nous faire!” (“Let us alone!”), (153)
• A principle is “a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend”. Thus a principle is an abstraction which subsumes a great number of concretes. It is only by means of principles that one can set one’s long-range goals and evaluate the concrete alternatives of any given moment. It is only principles that enable a man to plan his future and to achieve it. (157)
• Businessmen – who provide us with the means of livelihood, with jobs, with labor-saving devices, with modern comforts, with an ever-rising standard of living – are the men most immediately and urgently needed by society. (174)
• There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matter of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction. (202)
• Capitalism was the only system in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production, not by force, but by trade, the only system that stood for man’s right to his own mind, to his work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself. If this is evil, by the present standards of the world, if this is the reason for damning us, then we – we, the champions of man – accept it and choose to be damned by the world. We choose to wear the name “Capitalism’ printed on our foreheads, proudly, as our badge of nobility”. (213)
• If you want to fight for capitalism, there is only one type of argument that you should adopt, the only one that can ever win in a moral issue: the argument from self-esteem. This means: the argument from man’s right to exist – from man’s inalienable individual right to his own life. (224)
• Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future – if mankind is to have a future. Those who wish to fight for it must discard the title of “conservatives”. “Conservatism” has always been misleading name, inappropriate to America. Today, there is nothing left to “conserve”. (225)
• Observe that both “socialism” and “fascism” involve the issue of property rights. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Observe the difference in those two theories: socialism negates private property rights altogether, and advocates “the vesting of ownership and control” in the community as a whole, i.e. in the state; fascism leaves ownership in the hands of private individuals, but transfers control of the property to the government. Ownership without control is a contradiction in terms; it means “property”, without the right to use it or to dispose of it. It means that the citizens retain the responsibility of holding property, while the government acquires all the advantages without any of the responsibility. (227)
• In any undertaking or establishment involving more than one man, it is the owner or owners who set the rules and terms of appropriate conduct; the rest of the participants are free to go elsewhere and seek different terms, if they do not agree. There can be no such thing as the right to act on whim, to be exercised by some participants at the expense of others. …It is only on the basis of property rights that the sphere and application of individual rights can be defined in any given social situation. Without property rights, there is no way to solve or to avoid a hopeless chaos of clashing views, interests, demands, desires and whims. (294)
• Capitalism valued a man’s life as it had never been valued before. (325)
• An idea is a light turned on in a man’s soul. (348)
• When you clamor for public ownership of the means of production, you are clamoring for public ownership of the mind. (352)
• The source of wealth is man’s mind. (352)
• Right to property is a right to action, like all others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values. (370)
• The purpose of law and of government is the protection of individual rights. (384)

Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged

Who is John Galt? Saatat olla kuullut kysymyksen, mutta tiedätkö vastauksen? Tämä kysymys toistuu ensimmäiset 600 sivua Ayn Randin 1168-sivuisessa mestariteoksessa Atlas Shrugged. Maailma näyttää menevän erikoiseen suuntaan ja vastuunkantajat ovat vähissä. Tapahtuu asioita, jotka ovat ihan kuin tästä maailmasta. Konkreettisia esimerkkejä pienistä asioista, joissa ihmiset toimivat ajattelemattomuuttaan väärin ja välinpitämättömästi. Dagny Taggart tarinan päähenkilönä yrittää kaikkensa, mutta ei saa otetta siitä, mitä taustalla oikein tapahtuu. John Galt antaa vinkkejä itsestään ennen varsinaista ilmaantumistaan.

Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged

John Galt on lakkokenraali. Hän haluaa pysäyttää maailman moottorit agitoimalla ahkerat ja ajattelevat ihmiset lakkoon, mielen lakkoon. Mitä jos vastuunkantajat kaikkoavat maailmasta? Mitä jos he kohauttavat olkapäitään ja päättävät yksinkertaisesti poistua? Päättävät lopettaa tekemisensä, jättäävät kaiken taaksensa ja vain katoavat? Mitä jää jäljelle? Miten yhteiskunta toimii, jos kukaan ei kanna vastuuta? Mitä jos ahkerien mitta vain tulee täyteen?

 

Kapitalismin klassikko

 

Ayn Randin Atlas Shrugged on todellinen jättipaketti. Ei voi kuin ihmetellä, kuinka Rand on pystynyt pitämään kokonaisuuden tarinan koossa. Alussa asiat vaikuttavat viattomilta, mutta tarinan kehittyessä niille tulee merkitys ja ne kumuloituvat kaaokseksi. Kirja on luonteeltaan syvällistä yhteiskuntafilosofiaa. Se avaa tarinan muodossa yleisen yhteiskunnallisen ajattelumme ongelmia. Erityisesti se hyökkää altruismia ja valtiokeskeisyyttä kohtaan. Sankariksi Rand nostaa itsenäisen yksilön, joka omilla toimillaan tavoittelee omaa onnellisuuttaan.

 

Atlas Shrugged on klassikko. Erityisesti USA:ssa teoksella on oma merkittävä roolinsa ja siihen viitataan usein, sekä hyvässä että pahassa. Minä asemoin Atlas Shruggedin kolmen parhaan lukemani kirjan joukkoon. Lukukokemuksena se on suoritus, josta voi olla ylpeä. Moni sen tahtoisi lukea, mutta 1168 sivua karsii jyvät akanoista. Ilman todellista tahtoa sitä ei kannata edes aloittaa. Vähän kuin Raamattukin, vain hyvin harvat ovat sen alusta loppuun lukeneet. Atlas Shruggedia voi perustellusti tituleerata yhdeksi kapitalismin raamatuista. Hauskana anekdoottina kirjassa esiintyy kultaisella dollarimerkillä varustettuja savukkeita, jotka symboloivat kapitalismin henkeä. Jos tuollaisia olisi oikeasti tarjolla, todennäköisesti alkaisin polttamaan.

 

Atlas Shruggedin parasta antia ovat monipuoliset ja mielikuvitukselliset henkilöhahmot. John Galt itsessään on elävä legenda, mutta tarinaan mahtuu paljon muitakin. Hank Rearden, yrittäjä, innovaattori ja oman tiensä kulkija. Todellinen taistelija, yrittäjyyden perikuva. Francisco d'Anconia, mies joka yllättää kaikki toimimalla toisin kuin hänen oletettaisiin toimivan. Ragnar Danneskjöld, mies joka haluaa poistaa Robin Hood-sankaruuden maailmasta toimimalla juuri päinvastoin kuin Hood. Päähenkilönä tarinassa kuitenkin on Dagny Taggart, nainen joka ei pääse perheyrityksenä johtoon, vaikka kaiken vastuun kantaakin. Pahiksia tarinaan mahtuu myös useita. Moni näistä veljeilee valtion kanssa pyrkien politikoimalla pönkittämään omaa valta-asemaansa. Havahduttavinta näissä kaikissa henkilöissä on se, että jokaiselle löytyy helposti vastinpari elävästä elämästä.

 

Atlas Shruggedin opetus

 

Atlas Shruggedissa John Galt kumppaneineen kutsuu valitsemiaan henkilöitä "mielen lakkoon" eli jättämään kaiken taakseen ja kohauttamaan olkapäitään nyky-yhteiskunnalle. Kuten yleisesti lakoissa, tässä lakossa kukaan ei esitä kenellekään vaatimuksia, sen sijaan yksilöt vain jättävät roolinsa yhteiskunnassa, kun mitta tulee täyteen.

Ajatus olkapäiden kohottamisesta ja taustalle poistumisesta on kiehtova. Ei käy kiistäminen, etteikö se välillä kävisi mielessä. Nykymaailmassa tämä voisi tarkoittaa vaikka sitä, että tietyn pisteen, tietyn riippumattomuuden tilan, saavutettua sitä voisi todeta, että nyt riitti ja muuttaisi ulkomaille. Mielettömäksi menevä verotus voisi olla yksi tällainen laukaiseva tekijä. Itse voisin lähteä vaikka Sveitsiin.

 

Onko downshiftaaminen mielen lakkoilua?

 

Toisaalta aloin miettimään, onko nykyilmiöistä downshiftaaminen yksi muoto "to shrugg" eli liittyä mielen lakkoon? Osittain on, sanoisin, mutta kuitenkin vain niissä tapauksissa, joissa downshiftaaja jää elämään omilla saavutuksillaan, eikä valinnallaan rasita muuta yhteiskuntaa. Tiedän monia tapauksia, jotka työnteollaan ja sijoitustoiminnallaan tähtäävät tiettyyn varallisuustasoon, tiettyyn taloudelliseen riippumattomuuteen, jonka jälkeen he tahtovat alkaa elää rennommin ja alkaa toteuttamaan aktiivisemmin arvojensa mukaisia asioita. Tällaiseen valintaan yksilöllä tulee olla vapaa oikeus. Toinen downshiftaamisen muoto eli vähemmän tekeminen ja muiden siivellä eläminen siitä syystä, että ei viitsitä tehdä enempää, ei sen sijaan sovellu randilaiseen ajatteluun.

Kirjan parhaat palat

Kirjan parhaat palat voi kiteyttää kolmeen osioon. Francisco d'Anconian puhe juhlissa esitettyyn väitteeseen, että raha on kaiken pahan alku, on mestarillinen tykitys, joka ei selittelyitä kaipaa. Puhe löytyy kokonaisuudessaan alta. Toinen huippukohta on Ragnar Danneskjöldin perustelut sille, miksi hän haluaa hävittää Robin Hoodin levittämän ajattelun maailmasta. Ensiajatuksella tuskin kukaan sanoo vastustavansa Robin Hoodia, mutta kun kuulee Danneskjöldin argumentit, alkaa asiaa ajattelemaan uudella tavalla. Ehkä rikkaiden ryöstäminen ei sittenkään ole oikeudenmukaista. Kolmas kohokohta on John Galtin puheet, erityisesti kirjan viimeisessä kappaleessa esitetty loppupuhe, jossa kiteytyy Randin filosofian ydinkohdat ja Atlas Shruggedin sanoma. Tämä puhe on 66 sivua pitkä, joten liitän siihen vain linkin. Nämä lukemalla saa jo jonkinlaisen käsityksen siitä, millainen mestariteos Ayn Randin Atlas Shrugged on. Jos elämässäsi on joskus riittävästi aikaa tälle teokselle, suosittelen lukemaan, koska se takuulla jättää jäljen omaan ajatteluusi koko loppuelämäksi.

Francisco d'Anconia's Money Speech

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."

Ragnar Danneskjöld on Robin Hood

"I've chosen a special mission of my own. I'm after a man whom I want to destroy. He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men's minds, we will not have a decent world to live in".
What man?
Robin Hood. He was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Well, I'm the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich - or, to be exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.
What in blazes do you mean?
... Ragnar:  ... I have never robbed a private ship and never taken any private property. Nor have I ever robbed a military vessel - because the purpose of a military fleet is to protect from the violence the citizens who paid for it, which is the proper function of a government. But I have seized every lootcarrier that came within range of my guns, every government relief ship, subsidy ship, loan ship, gift ship, every vessel with a cargo of goods taken by force from some men for the unpaid, unearned benefit of others. I seized the boats that sailed under the flag of the idea which I am fighting: the idea that need is a sacred idol requiring human sacrifices - that the need of some men is the knife of a guillotine hanging over others - that all of us must live with our work, our hopes, our plans, our efforts at the mercy of the moment when that knife will descend upon us - and that the extent of our ability is the extent of our danger, so that success will bring our heads doen on the block, while failure will give us the right to pull the cord. This is the horror which Robin Hood immortalized as an ideal of righteousness. It is said that he fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is not remembered as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became a symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors. It is this foulest of creatures – the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich – whom men have come to regard as the moral idea." ". . . Do you wonder why the world is collapsing around us? That is what I am fighting, Mr. Rearden. Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive."

This in John Galt Speaking

John Galt's final speech can be read here. It's circa 66 pages long, but still highly worth of reading.

"We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt. There is a difference between our strike and all those practiced for centuries: our strike consists, not of making demands, but of granting them. We are evil, according to your morality. We have chosen not to harm you any longer. We are useless, according to your economics. We have chosen not to exploit you any longer. We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen not to endager you, not to wear the shackles any longer. We are only an illusion, accoring to your philosophy. We have chosen not to blind you any longer and have left you free to face reality - the reality you wanted, the world as you see it now, a world without mind." (1011)

Some extra quotations 

"What's wealth but the means of expanding one's life? There's two ways one can do it: either by producing more or by producing it faster. And that's what I'm doing: I'm manufacturing time... I'm producing everything I need, I'm working to improve my methods, and every hour I save is an hour added to my life." (722)

"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." (731)

"There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in the whole of human history. Every other kind and class has stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable - except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race. Well, their turn has come. Let the world discover who they are, what they do and what happens when they refuse to function. This is the strike of the men of the mind, Miss Taggart. This is the mind on strike." John Galt (738)

Some links to Atlas Shrugged:

http://www.dailypaul.com/133313/francisco-d-anconias-ayn-rands-money-speech-in-atlas-shrugged

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged